This invention relates to orthopedic devices for providing support, pain relief or injury prevention for the lower back. More particularly, this invention relates to an orthopedic device including a support with magnets adapted to be worn by a user to provide support, pain relief or injury prevention for the user.
The cause of back injuries and pain can be stated: “It's not WHAT you lift, but HOW you lift, and HOW you do everything else”. Only 4% of back injuries are “one-event” situations, where the cause is easily definable. The rest involve a level of repetitive motion damage, exacerbated by poor postural transitions, stretching spinal tissues, degrading them until they reach the “ready-to-go” stage. A simple sneeze or tying one's shoes can be the final straw, but these injuries are normally termed as “lifting” injuries.
Many orthopedic devices in the form of supports have been proposed to provide lower back support to avoid injuries and to prevent or alleviate lower back pain. Supports designed for this purpose have generally been of two different types. A first type uses a conforming pad, typically made of foam material, with the pad being permanently attached to the support, either inside or outside the fabric of the support, with the pad in a position to be compressed against the lower back region when the support is arranged about the waist of the user. The second type employs an inflatable air bladder having one or more air chambers with the wall of the bladder being sufficiently flexible to enable the air chamber to conform to the shape of the back of the wearer when the support is attached around the waist.
Both types of support devices suffer from the disadvantage that the portion of the device in contact with the back of the user (the pad or the air chamber walls) functions to easily conform to the shape of the wearer's back. Consequently, if the lower back is in a position other than for ideal posture, the support does not promote a change to the proper posture since the contact region of the pad adapts to the shape of the lower back. When this shape is contorted, as for example by performing a stressful lifting routine, the back is not effectively impeded by the device from maneuvering to an improper posture.
There have been many variations of back supports over the years. For example, elastic back supports have been available with and without suspenders. The supports are wrapped tightly around the waist and cinched with Velcro or similar closures. These devices made several safety claims, such as “This product will conform to the wearer's body, for comfort” or “This product should be tightened during any lifting activities, but loosened and allowed to hang untightened by the suspenders during non-lifting periods”. If metal stays were present, the claim was often made that “The metal stays will remind the wearer to lift properly”. While many support devices have been and are available, they do not properly or adequately provide support and improvement of spinal mechanics or relieve or prevent pain. These devices conform to the body and do not provide a template to which the spine will conform.
A dramatic improvement in orthopedic supports has been provided in the devices described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,429,587 entitled ORTHOPEDIC PAD and U.S. Pat. No. 5,651,763 entitled ORTHOPEDIC BELT. These patents describe orthopedic devices that provide a lumbosacral support system comprising a support and an orthopedic pad carried by the support. The orthopedic pad has a contoured template surface with a transversely extending central trough portion for accommodating the protruding spinal processes of the wearer when the pad is pressed against the lumbar region, and a pair of raised plateau regions flanking the central trough portion for contacting the erector spinae muscles of the wearer to provide support and improvement of spinal mechanics. The template surface of the pad has a vertical surface contour through the central region approximating the average lordotic curve of a wearer. The support is longitudinally tapered so the pad is arranged at an angle to vertical to optimally engage the lumbar region of the wearer.
The devices described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,429,587 and 5,651,763 provide a firm, curved surface, pressed against the spine that tends to assist spinal tissues to maintain correct spinal posture by conforming to the surface of the curved, firm lumbar pad. Later, a Harvard Med School paper found that a “curved, firm surface” created “proprioceptive feedback”, a subconscious effect where the spine would conform to a predetermined lumbar pad, improving spinal mechanics. This dynamic occurs where spinal tissues act independently of the conscious mind, to reorient their positioning in order to stay within a safe range of motion. Because poor spinal mechanics becomes an ingrained habit, change is very difficult to achieve at the conscious level. Additionally, two peer reviewed studies found that this lumbar pad did maintain a safe range of motion in a simple reaching task (no lifting, where the conscious mind would take over) and credited the result to “proprioceptive feedback”. Finally, the American Osteopathic Academy of Sports Medicine, in granting Back-A-Line, the owner of U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,429,587 and 5,651,763, the only Seal of Acceptance granted in their history, also praised the curved, firm lumbar pad as the reason.
Magnets have also been proposed for relieving pain in the lower back region. Magnetic therapy is intended to relieve pain, improve circulation and promote healing. Magnetic therapy to be effective requires magnets that adequately deliver an effective magnetic field of sufficient depth over the entire lumbar region. There are many different types of magnets and many of them have no significant therapeutic effect.
Spinal weakening or damage occurring because of poor spinal mechanics often result in chronic back pain due to swollen or stretched tissues and insufficient blood flow. Even if back pain is treated with magnetic therapy, however, such treatment does not improve spinal mechanics nor eliminate the risk of future spinal damage. The prior spinal mechanics may have resulted in compressed disks, stretched and weakened ligaments and other problems that would result in (cur-rent) “residual pain” and would continue to deteriorate further without the introduction of improvements to the spinal mechanics.
Existing “residual pain”, caused by prior poor spinal mechanics or other problems, when treated by magnetic therapy will not improve significantly unless the magnets are of sufficient strength and characteristics to access the lumbar region and the affected spinal tissues. Such “residual pain” may also lead to undesirable compensating spinal mechanics as a means of lessening the existing pain, but such compensating spinal mechanics may cause other negative effects on the tissues that do the compensating.
In consideration of the above background, there is a need for improved orthopedic supports that improve spinal mechanics, reduce pain in the lumbar region and provide relief for chronic back pain from prior spinal damage.